by Paul Finch
Next it addressed her in an eloquent eastern tongue, which something inside her identified as Assyrian. Other languages followed, languages which only existed carved on tablets, which surely no man alive could speak: Sumerian … Hittite … Elamite …
“No!” Flavia cried, spinning around, trying to locate the speaker, but failing because now there was more than one voice in the house. There were countless, speaking infinite languages, some screaming, some shouting, others even chanting the words backwards. It was an insane hubbub worthy of the original dirge that was Babel.
Flavia sank to her knees, cowed. There could be only one meaning to this, one terrible meaning. This thing she faced was not the restless soul of a deceased man, not even a man whose life of crime might have invited damnation. This was something far worse.
“You … are evil,” she stammered. “Evil!”
The dissonance ceased.
“Evil … evil … evil!” came a mocking echo, which didn’t sound at all like Flavia.
She gazed wearily around. Nothing moved in the gloom.
‘Evil’ was one way to describe it. ‘Infernal’ would be another.
Infernal. Those spirits were the most dreadful of all. They were the dark and uncontrollable aggressors, whose hellish excesses made even the barbarians seem meek; they were the gleeful spreaders of plague and famine, of leprosy, madness, cruelty and lust; and just one of their kind was certainly more than she, or anyone else of her lowly standing, could hope to contend with. It would take a holy man of awesome faith and power to exorcise such a being.
“You … you must leave here,” she said feebly. “You must. I … command you.”
Try as she may, she couldn’t rouse herself to put fight into her voice. Her cheeks were wet with involuntary tears. She stood and again tried to retreat, haplessly, in no particular direction, her sandalled feet stumbling in the wreckage of furniture – until suddenly a gleaming black face appeared over her shoulder.
With a screech, Flavia jumped away.
Only to find that it was a bust of Julius Caesar that had alarmed her.
During the previous madness, the dust-sheet had fallen off it.
There was another chuckle from some deep corner of the room. “You command?” came a scornful whisper. “You?”
“Not … not I,” she responded. “Our Lord. The Lion of Judah. God, Himself.”
“You speak for God?”
“You know I do.” The only weapon she had was her belief. And now she clung to it stubbornly. “Our Father,” she said aloud, “which art in Heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come …”
There was a faint, drawn-out groan from somewhere in the darkness.
Flavia stuttered with surprise, but determinedly continued: “Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread …”
Another groan was heard, this one deep, heartfelt. Flavia was again surprised, but also mildly excited. Could she actually be winning? Was such a thing was possible?
Perhaps it had never encountered her sort before – people of deep faith and strong conviction? The Romans, for all their weapons and money, were spiritually weak. They didn’t believe in those gods whose bloodstained effigies they’d raised in their cities and squares. Their temples were more like markets. They were interested only in wealth and power. Little wonder they had no resistance to something hailing from a world beyond the material. The main question was how much resistance did she have?
Eager to find out, she hurried on: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And deliver us not into temptation, but deliver us …”
And only then did her prayer falter. For unbidden names were suddenly springing into her mind: Timothy, bishop of Ephesus – beaten to death with rocks and stones for opposing the pagans’ carnal festival of Katagogian; Ignatius, bishop of Antioch – on the orders of Emperor Trajan, thrown into the arena to be torn apart by two starved lions.
The holy words dried in Flavia’s mouth. A momentous thought struck her.
How could she imagine that she was working some sort of miracle here? She, who was nobody, a fly-speck in comparison to those great martyrs! In light of the brutal savagery that had ended their glorious lives, how could she believe that she – a private worshipper who had failed even to fully convert her children, let alone carry the word to the heathens – possessed the authority to dispel this towering force of darkness?
Hadn’t it taken Christ himself in one infamous incident?
“My name is Legion, for we are many!” the possessed man had roared, before Jesus drove the invaders out of him; and even the Lord had been forced to call upon a herd of wild pigs to incarcerate the devilish horde.
Another groan of despair cut across her thoughts. “Mercy,” it wheezed, “have mercyyyy …”
And Flavia knew then that she possessed no such power, for victory had never been bought so cheaply. She didn’t finish the prayer, but stood her ground stiffly.
“Your moans are pitiful,” she said, “but your attempts to delude me more pitiful still. I know you for what you are. You will never beguile me away from the fate Our Lord has decreed for me.”
There was a contemplative silence – the silence of a chapel.
And something struck Flavia on the back of the skull with horrific force.
Her neck went forward as if on a hinge, kaleidoscopic lights flashed at the backs of her eyes, and she crumpled to her knees. Seconds of meaningless, dislocated thought passed before she could register the two halves of the broken Caesarian bust, and her own blood pooling on the mosaic. Then the mosaic itself turned against her – or at least something concealed within it, for all at once the elemental howls of some colossal beast filled the room, and the various sheets scattered across the floor rose up as one, and swathed themselves into a shape so abhorrent that Flavia could only scream and scream as it descended in a rush upon her.
*
The early sun probed the river mist with red spears when Flavia first became aware that she was outside the villa. Birds twittered amid the bright new greenery of the spring. In some hidden place by the waters, a stag coughed.
She listened to it as she lay on the earthen road, naked and bruised and lacerated all over as if by a leopard’s claws. Feeble through blood-loss, numbed with the shock of broken bones, it was all she could do to slither through the dust like a snake. The raped aperture between her thighs was a source of intolerable pain. Her scalp stung where great hanks of her raven locks had been ripped out by the roots.
She’d made perhaps twenty yards, when Maximion, not yet armoured but vigilant enough to have thrown a cloak over his shoulders and to have brought his sword, came trotting towards her. He reined his horse alongside, and gazed down. At his rear, the rest of the Praetorians approached, some mounted, some on foot. All, like their master, were wary and brandished arms.
There was evidently no need for the tribune to ask whether Flavia had succeeded.
“The spirit … remains,” she mumbled through bloodied lips. “You … you won’t be able to live here …”
Maximion sniffed and sat back in his saddle. He signalled two of his guards to come forward and aid the woman. They did so, but slowly and with caution, as if they expected her to launch herself on them. For all their care, it was torment to Flavia’s battered body. As they lifted her to her feet, she contorted in pain.
“So much for your Christ,” Maximion observed.
“I could … I could have banished it,” she said, having to lean on the soldiers to stand. “But … it would only have gone of its own free will.”
The tribune’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“This visitation … this haunting,” she said. “It was all a ploy … a ruse …”
Maximion glanced towards his house, shimmering into view through the sun-laced mist. “Ruse or not, banishment of the thing would have suited me!”
“It would not have suited Our Lord,” she replied. He glar
ed at her, his bemusement turning to anger. She continued undaunted: “My path is set. I ask you to send me along it.”
“You stupid harlot! You speak as if this is some kind of victory.”
She could only nod.
“In Jupiter’s name, girl … the executioner awaits.”
“As does my duty,” she replied. Her head drooped, the torn muscles in her back and neck no longer able to support it.
Scarlet-faced, the tribune indicated that his men should take her away, and, seeing now that he no longer had use for her, they resumed their normal methods, knocking her feet from under her and dragging her off by the wrists, oblivious to her agonised cries.
The tribune looked away, uninterested, not a little embarrassed in fact that he had put such trust in her in the first place. In the bright morning sun, with the dawn humours burned away, his villa was now fully visible, with its red tiles and walls of yellowed stone. It looked so homely, so harmless, but Maximion made no attempt to approach. Even his war-horse was skittish; it hung nervously back, puffing, pawing the road.
Yet neither of them, man nor brute, had an inkling of the true turmoil in the deep, black heart of the house. Neither even heard the choked roars of a gargantuan yet impotent rage. Neither could imagine the despair in that wretched place, and the desolation of defeat.
Sources
Twilight In The Orm-Garth was first published in Darker Ages, 2004
The Amphibians is original to this publication
For We Are Many was first published in Darkness Rising #3, 2002
Find out more about the author and his works by visiting Paul Finch 's blog
Contact author
Facebook:http//facebook.com
Amazon Author's page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Paul-Finch/e/B0034PPAH6/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
